


Self-Conscious

by JRaylin441



Series: Briareus [15]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, basically Ed being a bit strange but super smart, parental!Hughes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-18
Updated: 2016-06-18
Packaged: 2018-07-15 18:55:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7234564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JRaylin441/pseuds/JRaylin441
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maes is having a terrible day. And then Ed shows up.</p>
<p>
  <i>There were reports there, from the language specialists they had called in, all saying the same thing. It was impossible. It couldn’t be done. They had tried their best, but it was like nothing they had ever seen before.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Self-Conscious

Hughes closed his eyes for a moment, kneading his temples. There was a headache looming on the horizon, and the migraines he could get were _legendary_. The sensory deprivation did not help, and as the pain started to build, Maes realized that it was time to employ drastic measures. His hand unerringly found the bottom drawer of his desk and hauled at the heavy thing. He groped around inside, unwilling to open his eyes just yet, until his fingers brushed against an object. The other hand left its post at his temple to lift the thing onto his desk, covering any papers below. He opened his eyes.

Elicia’s photo album.

Well, to be more exact, one of Elicia’s many photo albums. This one was just a compilation of Maes’s favorite pictures. The pictures that could hold off a migraine by the sheer amount of adorableness contained within. He updated it about once a week.

Even now, after less than a minute of cooing over the pictures of his precious daughter, occasionally accompanied by his angel of a wife, he could feel the pain receding. His family was a balm like no other. He weighed the pros and cons of calling Roy to help spread the comfort, but in the end decided against it. There were, sadly, still things to be done. And in a rather timely manner at that. This had, of course, been the cause of the headache in the first place. Heaving a sigh of regret, he replaced the well-worn pages and stared down at his desk.

There were reports there, from the language specialists they had called in, all saying the same thing. It was impossible. It couldn’t be done. They had tried their best, but it was like nothing they had ever seen before. The ‘it’ in question was a large stone tablet. One of the men Amestris had placed in Drachma had sent a photograph of it a few weeks ago, along with a letter explaining the situation. Drachma had found the tablet out in the mountains and was now touting it around as the thing with the knowledge to bring Amestris to her knees.

The second the information had been processed, Hughes had been caught up in a frenzy of activity. The intelligence department was frantically trying to learn anything else they could about the tablet while consultant linguists were brought on to translate the hunk of stone.

All to culminate in this. Weeks of wasted effort and progress as slow as swimming through tar. The linguists were at a dead end and the only other information the spy had been able to turn up was that the tablet was from some ancient civilization known for its military prowess. Everyone in the office was buzzing with pent-up energy as they panicked over something they could do nothing about. The headache had sprung from Maes’s attempts to sum up the struggle in a report to his superiors. A picture of the tablet was sitting at the top of his desk, ready to be paper clipped to the cover.

Once again, Hughes contemplated calling Roy, if only to have him burn the damn thing with the amount of sudden savagery it deserved.

The door opened on one Edward Elric.

“Hey Hughes! What’s up?” The kid flopped into a chair and propped his legs up on the desk. A glance at his face said that the action wasn’t so much to annoy as it was to get comfortable. It warmed Maes to know that Ed was so at ease around him. At the same time, he felt a spark of irrational, sleep-deprived panic when some dirt fell off the kid’s boots onto the photograph.

“Hello Edward! What brings you to Central?” As he spoke, he brushed at the dirt. The vigorous movements caught the photograph and it fluttered over the front of the desk to the floor. Hughes made a desperate snatching motion after it.

“Shit, Sheska wasn’t joking when she said you were high strung today. Here.” And the white-gloved hands did not wrinkle or stain the paper, something that Hughes would not have cared about before two days without sleep. Ed took a glance at the picture and then handed it over.

“Yeah. Sorry about that, Ed. It’s been a stressful few days.” Two golden eyes sharpened and spent a few seconds analyzing Maes’s face.

“Hmm. Maybe I’ll come back in a few days. Al ‘n I are gonna be in town for a little while, so it shouldn’t be hard.” And the boots came down from the desk. Instantly, Hughes felt dreadful. What kind of welcome had that been?

“It’s no trouble, Ed. Please stay. I’ll be heading home soon, and you and Al can stay there while you’re here.”

Another critical glance. “Nah. I think I’ll just head over there now. You look like death.” He started to leave the office, calling the rest of the words over his shoulder. “Don’t even know why you guys would get all worked up about a bunch of old royalty anyway.”

Shock like a lightning bolt down Maes’s spine. “What did you just say?”

Ed paused with his hand on the doorknob and looked back. “Huh?”

“Just then!” And hope was fizzing down his exhaustion-strained nerves. “About the photograph. What did you say? Can you read it?” A flash of shock crossed the kid’s face before it smoothed into a mocking smile.

“Nah. I just saw some of the letters looked like crowns.”

“No they don’t.” And Hughes didn’t need to look down to check because he had been staring at the thing for hours on end already. Ed was playing dumb for some yet-to-be-established reason, but if he could read it…If he could read the tablet then maybe everyone could stop feeling so _useless_. “Why did you say that the tablet was about royalty?” The friendly camaraderie of earlier was now shifting as the question became an order.

“Would you believe it was a lucky guess?” The kid was trying to lighten the mood, but it didn’t even sound like _he_ was convinced it would work.

“Edward. This is a matter of national security.” The rarely-seen serious side of Lieutenant Colonel Hughes was on show. “No one else can read this tablet. Tell me what you know.”

Ed’s shoulders had tensed up. Sensing that the conversation was far from over, he picked his way back to the chair and lowered himself warily into it. His feet stayed on the ground.

“It’s just a list.” A combat boot scuffed at the carpet and Major Elric chose to watch that rather than look at Hughes. “Like a lineage. This guy had this son who had this son and so on. ‘Cept they keep calling ‘em emperors or somethin’.”

At Maes’s skeptical glance, an automail hand snatched up the picture. Monotonously, a lineage of emperors was read out. By then end of it all, Hughes had to pick his fallen jaw off the floor.

“Ed, what _was_ that? _No one_ can read the tablet. We’ve had linguists working on it for weeks and they haven’t even figured out that it’s a lineage. We don’t even know what language it is!” Speaking of which, “What language _is_ it?”

By this point, Edward had slumped low in his seat, chin tucked to try and hide the rising blush. “’Dunno,” he muttered, and Maes actually chuckled, because if nothing else the boy was determined. He still thought he could play off his knowledge of this. But this was highly unusual. Normally, Edward was thrilled to hold his brilliance above the heads of others, gloating in his superiority. What made this any different?

“What, because you know so many languages?” Trying to lighten the mood now that Ed was so embarrassed, Maes settled for some light teasing.

The kid’s head cocked quizzically to one side. “Yeah.”

Another unexpected comment. “What?”

“Well, I mean, you know, the research that I’m doing isn’t exactly _common_. People who discover stuff in my field don’t exactly feel like they need to translate their stuff so everyone can read it. So, you know, I just kinda learned what I needed to.”

Stated so matter-of-factly. Learned languages to do research. Sometimes Maes forgot just how abnormal the Elrics’ lives were.

“How many languages do you know?”

“Six. Wait, no. Seven.” He tossed the number out, but when he registered Hughes’s face, he quickly started to backtrack. “Well, I mean, it’s not like I actually _know_ the languages. I can’t speak ‘em. Just, you know, read them. And it’s not like Old Amestrian really counts, since it’s halfway Amestrian. And my Aerugan _sucks_.”

It was sometimes easy to forget, when confronted with his extreme single-mindedness, that alchemy wasn’t Ed’s only talent. The kid was actually a _genius_. Well and truly one of the smartest people Maes had ever encountered.

“So.” His voice was a little strained, and he paused to clear his throat. “Which one is this?”

“It’s none of ‘em.” Maes tapped his fingers against his desk, making it clear that an explanation as vague as that would not suffice.

“I didn’t even think it was a real language.” Ed had gone back to staring at the floor. “It’s just what the _Bastard_ would always write his notes in.” For a moment, Hughes thought that Ed was talking about Roy, but the twisted, furious way he bit off the expletive showed that it was someone else. “I just kinda grew up knowing it. He had a bunch of books like it. When he left, it was what I used to teach myself to read with. ‘Thought it was Amestrian. Nasty surprise when I started school. The teacher thought I was being difficult when I did all my writing in it.”

As he talked, the boy became more and more subdued and bitter. A suspicion was growing in Hughes’s mind as to the identity of the Bastard and the reason for Ed’s sudden humility.

“This is the first time I’ve seen it written anywhere else. I just thought it was the code he used for his alchemy notes, but he just chose a really obscure language instead. Huh. I guess that makes it eight.”

And as Ed talked, the full meaning of everything began to sink in. The tablet was from an ancient militant society, but that was likely all that Drachma knew about it. Because there was nothing dangerous about the hunk of stone. It was just a record of dead emperors. Just a piece of harmless history.

Unable to help himself, Hughes threw his head back and began to laugh. The full-body kind of laugh that was more cleansing than even sleep. Standing up, he came around the desk and slapped a hand onto Ed’s shoulder.

“I should have gone to you in the first place! Of course the genius Elric boys could read a language that no one else can identify.” What that a blush? The normally over-the-top boy was hunched under Maes’s palm, shuffling his feet nervously. Unable to help himself, Hughes snapped a quick picture of the rare sight.

“Hey!”

Ah. Back to normal.

“Come on, Ed! I’m going to go check in with my superiors, and then let’s head home.”

“I think I’ll just head that way now…” Not back to normal, then. Somewhere in-between. There was clearly a vital detail that Ed wasn’t telling Hughes. Something that would explain why he was acting so unusually. Normally, this would be a cue for Maes to take a step back and give the kid his space, but there was no way that his superiors would accept the translation of the tablet without the story and proof in front of them.

“It’ll just take a moment! Let’s walk together!” And Maes reluctantly tossed an enthusiastic arm over the boy’s shoulders and steered him down the hall, ignoring his half-hearted protests.

Maybe one day, Ed would be comfortable enough around him to tell him what this had all been about.

*~*~*

A few years later, Ed would learn that the language had been Xerxesian.

Brigadier General Maes Hughes would not.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you thought!


End file.
